This invention relates to an ice product making machine or apparatus and, more particularly, to such a machine or apparatus in which a pair of freezing plates are arranged substantially vertically and in which flushing spray water is used for efficiently releasing ice products from the flat freezing sections of the freezing plates.
The typical construction of the vertical type ice product making machine or apparatus is shown in FIGS. 1 and 2.
In the prior-art ice product making machine shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a freezing unit 1 is comprised of a generally box-like freezing mold 2 and a cooling coil 3 affixed to the back side of the mold 2. The freezing mold 2 has a large number of freezing cells 4 defined by vertical partition plate members 2b and downwardly inclined horizontal partition plate members 2a. The freezing mold 2 is fabricated in its entirety of copper or the like thermal conductive material.
The above described freezing mold 1 is built into an automatic ice product making machine shown in FIG. 1. A water saucer 5 is provided at a lower portion of the automatic ice product making machine 1. The ice-making water filled in the tank 5 is supplied to the freezing mold 2 by means of a circulating pump 6 via a connecting hose 7 and a water feed tube 8. The refrigerant or cooling medium is supplied into the coil 3 through a compressor 10 and a condenser 11 provided in a housing 9 so that the mold 2 is chilled and the ice cubes are formed in the cells 4, these ice cubes being then stored in an ice cube storage tank 12 provided to the lower portion of the housing 9.
This known ice product making apparatus has a serious drawback that the freezing mold 2 is highly sophisticated in structure thus raising the costs of the overall apparatus.
The arrangement shown in FIGS. 3 (A) and (B) has been proposed as a means for obviating the drawback of the above described conventional device.
A strip 2 of a metal material having lower thermal conductivity, such as stainless steel is formed with uniformly spaced apart rib-like portions 2c. A pair of such strips 2 are placed vertically with their back sides 2d facing to each other and a meandering cooling coil 3 is provided in a space 2e between the plates 2. The freezing flat sections 2f are defined between the adjoining partitions 2c of the freezing plate 2.
Since the partitions 2c on one of the plate 2 are spaced apart by the same transverse distance as the partitions of the other plate, the partitions of the freezing plates 2, 2 are correctly in register with one another.
Thus, during the freezing process, the ice making water is supplied in circulation from the water supply pipe 8 mounted at an upper portion of the narrow space 2e between the plates 2 and gradually chilled and frozen as shown in FIG. 3(B), so that substantially semi-cylindrical ice products are formed separately from one another at the portions of the freezing sections 2f contacted with the cooling coil 3. In the defrost or harvesting process, flushing water is supplied to the back sides 2d of the freezing plates 2 through flush water outlet apertures 8a formed in the bottom wall portion of the supply pipe 8. Thus the temperature of the freezing plates 2 is raised slightly for promoting the harvesting process. The flushing water, however, is not caused to flow along the back sides of the freezing sections 2f of the plates 2 where the demand for the flushing water should be maximum, but only through channels or grooves 2g defined at the back sides of the confronting partitions 2c. Thus, in an ice product making machine with a lower hot gas supply capacity or devoid of a hot gas supply system, a longer harvesting time is required, so that the daily output capacity of ice making is lowered.